May 30, 2008

• Eternal Judgment by Pastor Don

  We are on a detailed study of the elementary principles of faith, and Pastor Don wants to make sure we all have the knowledge about these, because Paul says they are ELEMENTARY. But for many Christians, they are not so elementary. This is one of our wonderful studies where we end up touching base on many issues based on the conversations of those present in the Bible study. A lot was shared, not just about eternal judgment.

  Hebrews 6:1-3 Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits.

  All the Gospels have truth in them. Truth is good and it does happen as God says it will. But at times our emotions and compassion for people cause us to get confused. God creates AND destroys. We forget we’ve given our lives to Jesus and it isn’t all about you. The Bible says, WHOEVER calls on the name of Jesus shall be saved.

  Rotten apples can spoil the barrel. God is perfecting the will and love of a being that will be with Him forever. The individual previously had good and bad traits, but has a heart for God. God saves us and sets us apart and we are set apart as special to Him. He is working at cleaning up our wrong thinking, bad habits and attitudes. The five fold ministry is for the perfecting of the saints. Some of our thinking is wrong. And God will let us know that it is wrong. Jesus did not forbid us coming into the Kingdom because our theology was skewed. Between now and the perfecting that God wants, He will clean up our mouths, eyes, etc. Everybody in Christ is not perfect and right. The Gospel will clean us. From beginning to end, God takes us toward perfection.

  Does evil exist? YES, Do evil people exist? YES Do evil spirits exist? YES. Why did God permit evil?

  The reality of humankind is that they are beings to be perfected, and will be with God for eternity. We are not a robot or a tree. We are a being like Him, and God wants our company. We were made in His image and likeness, and God wanted to reproduce.

  Our intelligent, capable, functional, eternal God has given us free will. It is not predestination. God does not want to be loved by a robot or force our love. He gave us free will so that we can choose to love Him or not. If here was no free will, there could be no true love. Love is a choice and a connection is made. If a wife was forced to love her husband we would be like the Stepford wives, and there would be no growth in the relationship, no communication, no passion. If we could never choose our spouse, how can we feel their acceptance. Unfortunately some will use their free will to choose to do things that are not godly and hurt others.

  God wants us loving and peaceful and getting along. The risk of giving free will is worth it. Billions of beings who love Him, and want to be with Him. But there are others who do not like Him, and do not want to be with Him. For a time the wheat and the tares will grow together, and ultimately they will be separated, those who want to be with Him will be, those who don’t won’t.

  Here follows a quick, abbreviated History.

  God told Abraham to go where He showed him, to a land inhabited by people who do not practice law and moral behavior. At a later point, God told Abraham that his children were going to Egypt for 400 years, and then when God brings them back to the Promised Land, God would stop these evil practices, but before that the Israelites would increase their numbers in Egypt, in slavery. If God didn’t wait, Abraham would have had about 300 warriors which was not a large enough force to obliterate evil. After their sojourn in Egypt, Moses lead over a million out of Egypt to claim the Promised Land and obliterate the evil there, to establish the territory from Lebanon (N) to Jericho (S), to Jordan (E) and the Mediterranean Sea (W).

  God instructed the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child in that land. When King Saul disobeyed God’s instructions regarding a conquest and kept the best of the animals, and the enemy king alive, God was not pleased and King Saul lost his anointing because of disobedience.

  The problem was, you cannot maintain righteousness in a polluted environment. If any of the people in the land were left alive, they would ultimately pollute the Israelites with their false teachings and practices, and history shows that that happened, and even today the Israelites are paying for Saul’s disobedience.  Because some of the dirt will rub off.

  Lot’s family lived in Sodom and Gomorrah, and although they maintained some of God’s rules, the culture and tradition of that place rubbed off, and ultimately Lot’s daughters committed incest with their drunken father.

  How do we respond to that? Should God have saved Lot and wiped out his family? In our childhood we knew that there were some kids in the neighborhood that we should not get next to, for their bad behavior would rub off on us. We play God in our own little free will. God is saying, I don’t want it on My planet or in Heaven.

  Church has to get matter of fact about it. God’s system is perfect, and He put it in place so that He can protect us. He is the only one who knows our heart and knows who will get saved and who won’t.

  It is silly for a Christian who knows nothing about islam to say why can’t we all get along? If a muslim practices his faith to the totality of the koran, he is going to take you down.

  Think of it this way, you cannot keep three pet roaches in your kitchen or have a family of rats in your kitchen. They will multiply and infest your house.

  If an muslim dies in the war against infidels they are promised to receive 7-20 brown eyed virgins, all the wine and food that he can get. A muslim, if he doesn’t like what his wife says and does, can beat her and confine her to the couch for seven days. If she does not obey that, he can beat her and cast her out. It is a spirit, women beaten down,. There are cultural differences between the two faiths, and tolerance won’t work. Ifs you give to them, they will not give back in return. Their goal is to convert all to the muslim faith or kill the infidels who won’t convert. They will not tolerate any differences.

  God will save some muslims and open their eyes. They will be the ones that God wills to be saved. God will also save hindus, buddhists and those of other faiths. He will take His remnant out of all of them.

  Acts 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth and said: “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. All men who fear God are acceptable to Him.

  All cultures have a universal moral code. Murder is evil. God is good He put in the hearts of all men this moral code. We know right from wrong. Those who do not want God in their lives don’t want the Gospel to be preached.

  Today we do not know any Canaanites or Moabites. These cultures denied God and were destroyed. Now the Gospel is preached worldwide. God is bringing the harvest out of everywhere.

  Today the Gospel is being spread world wide. God is going to bring His harvest out of every part of this world. We are under Grace, so that anyone with a heart can be changed and altered under mercy. But there will be judgment – and God will separate the good and the bad.

  In these last days we are going to see an increase of religions that hate God. There are the muslims, the mysterious babylon that is likened to the european union who has come out against God. France and Belgium have taken God out of their constitution. God is removed from many aspects of life, and now we are getting back to religions that hate God openly.

  The Law is a tutor to bring us to grace. We don’t ignore the Law, but we don’t exactly keep the Law. There is the Sabbath, which is a day of resting in the Lord. Some churches debate whether or not the Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday. The truth of the matter is, every day is Sabbath. For today’s Jews, who are under the law, it is still impossible to fully keep the Law, especially with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. They have to observe all the sabbaths and all the holidays, but there are no sacrifices to atone for sins.

  God is expecting us to get mature enough to have church every day, to keep the feasts that were manifested in Christ and to keep them eternally. The sacrifice under the law was the atoning sacrifice given by God for the High Priest to atone for his sins and for the people in the nation of Israel. But that sacrifice can’t occur in the Temple in Jerusalem where God wanted the sacrifice to occur, because in AD 70 the Temple was destroyed.

  When Jesus was on the cross, the veil in the Temple ripped from top down, and the Holy Spirit left the temple. During the Passover following the one when Christ died for our sins, the priests went into the Temple to sacrifice, and came out with their clothes torn because they knew that the Shekinah glory was no longer in the Temple. This was recorded by Josephus.

  Caiaphus and Annas prophesied under the Holy Spirit, but they vacated their office. On the Day of Atonement, the Priest would enter the Holy of Holies dressed in white linen, and as part of the sacrifice dip a white sash into the blood. If the sash stayed red with the blood, God did not accept the sacrifice. If it turned white, God accepted the sacrifice. The sash, the year after Christ’s death and resurrection, stayed red.

  Yet God remains faithful, even when they were not.

  Israel was the first culture to protect women’s rights. Christianity only elevates and dignifies women. Jesus elevated women. he put importance on women.

  We are still to keep the festivals.

  Colossians 2:16-17 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.

  If someone chooses to keep the sabbaths, we are not to be judged. Why did God put these things into effect? Because they bring us to a better understanding of Yeshua, and His life follows the progression of the feasts. The Feast of Pentecost was the giving of the Holy Ghost, and there are some that preach that people cannot function in the gifts and signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit.

  We try to sort everything out in our physical minds, and are so busy trying in our own power, that we don’t spend time listening to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. He speaks to us and we are looking for a more complicated solution and miss the simplicity of the truth of the Gospel.

  Pastor Don then said this which gave me pause (ouch):

  GOD WANTS TO TALK TO US MORE THAN WE WANT TO TALK TO HIM.

  2 Peter 2:4 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment;

  God DID NOT SPARE. There will be judgment.

  2 Peter 2:5  and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;

  As with today’s times, at the time of Noah life was going on around the planet, people were doing their thing, and yet there was such evil on the earth that God had to destroy the evil. Only eight people were saved out of this judgment. But God will judge the ungodly.

  Genesis 6:1-3 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

  Pastor Don pointed out that the number of man is “6″ and it is no surprise that this event is recorded in Genesis 6. There were beings on the earth, cast down from Heaven with satan, when they rebeled against God. They committed the atrocity of mating with the women (daughters of men), and producing unholy offspring. We can read about this casting down of lucifer in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. God has plans to raise a savior from the sons of men – and the devil did not want that to happen. His plan was to pervert the bloodline by this unholy mating. Only Noah and his family were righteous (meaning that there was none of the unholy bloodline in their generations. It did not mean that Noah was without sin.) This was a plan from hell to prevent Jesus from being born on earth. Any group that has a rampant hate of Israel is satanic. Hitler was another pawn of satan to try and destroy the Jews so that Jesus could not return again.

  We can see that this was rampant on earth, because a study of mythology has so many creatures that are not human, with unbelievable powers. The problem was, many men of that day did not stand up to satan and say, “No, you can’t have my daughter.”

  Remember with Lot, when he entertained the angels, there were evil beings and fleshly men outside that wanted to do perversions. Lot was going to give them his daughter. That was wrong. But Lot did not have to do that because the angels protected Lot and his household.

  Being righteous is not based on having no error in our judgments, but we are righteous as Romans tells us, because we believe in God. We do the best we can to obey God. Abraham was righteous not because of what he did, but because He BELIEVED God, and God counted that for righteousness.

  In Genesis 6:5 we see God’s viewpoint Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

  EVERY INTENT of the thoughts of his heart was ONLY EVIL CONTINUALLY. That is a sad indictment.

  Jesus said that it shall be again as it was in the days of Noah and it is getting to be again like that in this day and age.

  Genesis 6:11-13 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

  God will give them a bath and wash them clean. What can we learn from this? To be honest, God has different levels of cleansing and purification. To obliterate evil is really an act of love to protect His children. Pastor Don said that if a criminal was to climb into his window at night and was seeking to murder and kill his children, Pastor Don would kill to protect his family. God gave the people a chance to change, and they refused. (Heather’s note, don’t forget it took 120 years to build the ark and Noah was called a “preacher of righteousness” so the people heard the message a long time and chose to discount it.)

  Ezekiel 39:11-16 “It will come to pass in that day that I will give Gog a burial place there in Israel, the valley of those who pass by east of the sea; and it will obstruct travelers, because there they will bury Gog and all his multitude. Therefore they will call it the Valley of Hamon Gog. For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them, in order to cleanse the land. Indeed all the people of the land will be burying, and they will gain renown for it on the day that I am glorified,” says the Lord GOD. “They will set apart men regularly employed, with the help of a search party, to pass through the land and bury those bodies remaining on the ground, in order to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they will make a search.  The search party will pass through the land; and when anyone sees a man’s bone, he shall set up a marker by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon Gog. The name of the city will also be Hamonah. Thus they shall cleanse the land.”’

  The judgement will cause major death, and it will take 7 months to bury he bodies to cleanse the land, and man will be employed doing this.

  Ezekiel 39:21-29 “I will set My glory among the nations; all the nations shall see My judgment which I have executed, and My hand which I have laid on them. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day forward. The Gentiles shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity; because they were unfaithful to Me, therefore I hid My face from them. I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword. According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I have dealt with them, and hidden My face from them. Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name— after they have borne their shame, and all their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, when they dwelt safely in their own land and no one made them afraid. When I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations, then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their land, and left none of them captive any longer. And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord GOD.”

  The judgment of God is not to be considered without realizing that He also shows wonderful Mercy. God is good. God is wiping out the poison so that the poison does not take you out. He is destroying what will destroy you.

  We need to remember that God is good and His judgment is just. He perceives far more than we can with our limited understanding.

  Pastor Don continued this discussion the following Friday, and I will post that hopefully tomorrow.

  Have a blessed night!

  Heather

  • 4:03 pm
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